him by the feet, and worshipped him. Then said
Jesus unto them, Be not afraid: go tell my brethren that they go into
Galilee, and there shall they see me."[1362]

One may wonder why Jesus had forbidden Mary Magdalene to touch Him, and
then, so soon after, had permitted other women to hold Him by the feet
as they bowed in reverence. We may assume that Mary's emotional approach
had been prompted more by a feeling of personal yet holy affection than
by an impulse of devotional worship such as the other women evinced.
Though the resurrected Christ manifested the same friendly and intimate
regard as He had shown in the mortal state toward those with whom He had
been closely associated, He was no longer one of them in the literal
sense. There was about Him a divine dignity that forbade close personal
familiarity. To Mary Magdalene Christ had said: "Touch me not; for I am
not yet ascended to my Father." If the second clause was spoken in
explanation of the first, we have to infer that no human hand was to be
permitted to touch the Lord's resurrected and immortalized body until
after He had presented Himself to the Father. It appears reasonable and
probable that between Mary's impulsive attempt to touch the Lord, and
the action of the other women who held Him by the feet as they bowed in
worshipful reverence, Christ did ascend to the Father, and that later He
returned to earth to continue His ministry in the resurrected state.

Mary Magdalene and the other women told the wonderful story of their
several experiences to the disciples, but the brethren could not credit
their words, which "seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them
not."[1363] After all that Christ had taught concerning His rising from
the dead on that third day,[1364] the apostles were unable to accept the
actuality of the occurrence; to their minds the resurrection was some
mysterious and remote event, not a present possibility. There was
neither precedent nor analogy for the stories these women told--of a
dead person returning to life, with a body of flesh and bones, such as
could be seen and felt--except the instances of the young man of Nain,
the daughter of Jairus, and the beloved Lazarus of Bethany, between
whose cases of restoration to a renewal of mortal life and the reported
resurrection of Jesus they recognized essential differences. The grief
and the sense of irreparable loss which had characterized the yesterday
Sabbath, were replaced by pro